Rambam's Ladder
*Ohioana Book Award 2005
An exploration of the contemporary world of giving, via the wisdom of an ancient scholar. Elie Wiesel, winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, called the book “a much-needed guide for anyone who believes in the noble precept that to give is to share.”
“The audience for this book is, basically, everyone. We can all benefit from its prod to examine how and why we volunteer, make charitable donations, help in times of crisis, give handouts to the "deserving" and/or the "undeserving.”
—Philanthropy News Digest
“This is an extraordinarily graceful book about a sometimes awkward subject.”
—Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler
The Christmas Tree
*New York Times bestseller, Audie Award/ Best Inspirational Book 1997
The story of an orphan girl who befriends a tiny fir tree that becomes the most famous tree of all, the tree at Rockefeller Center in New York City. “A rich, heartrending tale,” wrote Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s book critic, in Newsday. “I can imagine Dickens himself sniffling and smiling.”
“The touching tale of a girl and her tree, narrated by a Rockefeller Center gardener, will be a classic.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Unusual and endearing…”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Devil's Candy
*New York Times Notable Book 1991 and international best seller
This insider’s look at the movie business, said Newsweek, is “as close to the definitive portrait of the madness of big-time moviemaking as we’re likely to get.” Legendary film critic Pauline Kael called it “the best book yet on how a big studio can shape the content of a movie.”
“The question of why good people make bad movies has never been answered more persuasively than in this book.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“The most talked-about book in town.”
—The New York Times
“A great story has found its meticulous teller…Ms. Salamon conveys with energy and tenacity the characters and emotions that shape the progress of a film-production juggernaut, and gives us one of the few panoptic accounts we have of a demanding and dangerously collaborative art.”
—The New Yorker
“Delightful…Salamon is the perfect reporter…she has the novelist’s gift.”
—Vogue
Facing the Wind
*New York Times Notable Book, an NPR Fresh Air Best Book of 2001, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2001, Ohioana Book Award 2003, national best seller
“The story of an ordinary family dragged by fatal imperfection into a world of crushing disappointment, failure, and ultimately, violence,” said Erik Larson, author of Devil in the White City. “A compelling narrative, yes. But, more important, you’ll never again take for granted the simple joys of everyday life, that most fragile state of normality and grace. It’s one of those all-too-rare books that haunt the soul long after the last paragraph is read.”
“Facing the Wind…elevates itself out of the true crime genre into literature.”
—USA Today
“Facing the Wind raises profound questions: of guilt, retribution, justice, redemption and absolution. There are no easy answers. It is not a book that can be read and forgotten.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“[Julie Salamon’s] book is important not only for its lessons on the ravages of mental illness but for its ability to overturn our assumptions about evil, innocence, guilt and compassion.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“What is right? What is good? What is fair? I can’t remember when I last read a book that tackled these questions as unflinchingly as Facing the Wind. It moved me, astonished me, gave me nightmares, made me hug my children, and, long after I had (tremblingly) closed the covers, kept me thinking and thinking and thinking.”
—Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
The Net of Dreams
*New York Times Notable Book and winner of Ohioana Book Award 1997
Called “a haunting journey of discovery” by Joan Micklin Silver, director of Hester Street. This memoir begins on the set of Schindler’s List, travels through the Carpathian mountains, Auschwitz., Prague, and New York, and ends, surprisingly, in a tiny southern Ohio town.
“…Salamon’s struggle for memory is an evocative theme. Her distinctly American book, The Net of Dreams, is a family memoir, but the family it speaks to should be vast.”
—David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker
“This moving, intimate and often funny memoir demonstrates how the stories we must make up to survive can bring us to the actual truth, after all.”
—Salon.com
“Salamon offers an excellent account of seeing the Holocaust through her parents’ experiences, perceptively illustrating how it affected her own life.”
—Library Journal
White Lies
“A bright, restless novel,” said Richard Yates of Salamon’s first book, the story of a young woman wrestling with the darkness in her family’s past.
“The best parts make your hair stand up; that’s enough.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“The portrayals of Jamaica’s Czechoslovak parents, her feisty mother and silent doctor father, and of the beauty and dangers of rural America are evocative and vivid.”
—The New York Times Book Review
